Ultradependent Public School

With enthusiasm, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht announces the Ultradependent Public School (UPS): a curriculum to learn what we really, really need to enact the worlds we really, really want. Co-convened with an extended faculty of students, educators, and other cultural practitioners, UPS emphasizes study as a radically collective, public labor that lives in between institutionalized hierarchies, inhabiting the edges between formal classrooms and everyday life.  

UPS’s curriculum is built through months of field work by eight study nodes: Ultrahospitality, Ultrastudio, Ultraemergence, Ultracirculation, Ultradistro, Ultratranslation, Ultraspirit, and Ultramethods. Each through a specific field of inquiry, they have labored towards an understanding of how both collective and individual agency could manifest in processes of learning, despite—and because of—structures that have failed us.  

Following up a previous project at BAK by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, Trainings for the Not-Yet (2019/2020), UPS rehearses the idea of an exhibition as a series of trainings. From April 1–May 27, 2023, UPS transforms BAK into a schoolhouse with distinct study areas: a gymnasium, a copybar, a bootleg library, a gift hall, a microcosmicroom, and a cafeteria. Sixteen artworks as learning objects are located within BAK and the city of Utrecht, activated by an intensive public program of weekly trainings. Symposiums, rituals, field recordings, workshops, day-long radio shows, band rehearsals, skill-shares, student assemblies, beauty salons, bootleg distros, parties, and cook-offs are some of the ways in which UPS configures the act of training.    

The full program can be found on the BAK website from April 1, 2023.    

Join us on Saturday, April 1, 2023 from 2–10pm CEST for RRRadiossage, a hybrid and long-form radio broadcast curated by Reading Rhythms Club. The day begins with collective readings and sonic tours of the exhibition, followed by a welcoming word from the UPS faculty at 7pm CEST, then music and festivity. This eight-hour program happens live at BAK with an online stream via lumbung Radio and Stranded FM.  

Ultradependent Public School is assembled by Clara Balaguer—curator of BAK’s Civic civic Praxis praxis program—Jeanne van Heeswijk, and an extended network of collaborators including: 

Alejandro Navarrete, Alfred Marasigan, b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN (Berend Bombarius, Grace Lostia, Jun Saturay, and others), BB Workshop at Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut (Miquel Hervás Gómez, Ott Metusala), Carla Arcos, Czar Kristoff, Dante Carlos, Elaine W. Ho, Escuela de Garaje (Santiago Pinyol), Espacio Estamos Bien (Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Mariana Jurado Rico), Gabriel Fontana, Glenda Martinus, Harriet Rose Morley, Hopscotch Reading Room (Erin Honeycutt, siddhartha lokanandi), Hussein Shikha, James Rae Parnell, Jason Dy SJ, Jeanine van Berkel, Jen/Eleana Hofer, Jo-Anneke van der Molen, Julia Wilhelm, Lila Athanasiadou, Linda Zeb Hang, Lorenzo García-Andrade Llamas, Maria Molteni, Paul Pfeiffer, Publifluor (David Le Simple, Femke Snelting, Ludivine Loiseau, Nathan Izbicki, Olivier Bertrand, Pierre Huyghebaert, Sophie Boiron), Renan Laru-an, Sadrie Alves, Sandra Lange, Sean van den Steenhoven, Staci Bu Shea, Stranded FM (Jolijt Bosch, Luke Cohlen), Thomas Orbon, Ulises (Gee Wesley, Kayla Romberger, Lauren Downing, Nerissa Cooney, Ricky Yanas), Vishnu Vardhani Rajan, Wan Ing Que, and many more. 

BAK’s activities have been made possible through financial contributions by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the City of Utrecht. Ultradependent Public School has been made possible by extra financial contributions from VSBfonds, Fonds 21, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, K.F. Hein Fonds, and Stichting Elise Mathilde Fonds.     

BAK’s main partner in the field of education and research is HKU University of the Arts, Utrecht.